This invention relates to a system for disseminating and displaying information to the flight crew of aircraft in commercial or private aviation. In particular, this invention focuses on combining information derived from ground-based and airborne sources to aid in the navigation, air traffic control, and collision avoidance aspects of aviation.
The task of a flight crew in commerical or private aviation is an information intensive task--that is, the pilot must assimilate information concerning the weather, wind shears, winds aloft, air traffic in his vicinity, similar factors at his destination, landing factors, navigation, terrain, and parameters describing the movement of his own aircraft. In the past, most of this information has been garnered from a variety of sources, with some of it only being available from ground control personnel at an air traffic control facility. Although a pilot has the ultimate responsibility for his aircraft, and may countermand any instructions tendered by ground control personnel or air traffic controllers, in a number of recent instances critical information was not passed on for the pilot to make an informed decision. A number of aviation diasters have occurred due to errors at the ground control facility or due to misunderstandings or lack of communication between air traffic control and the crews of conflicting aircraft.
As a response to the ever increasing air traffic congestion surrounding air traffic control areas in large metropolitan regions, some proposals have been made for airborne systems to aid in collision avoidance. One such system is represented by the patent to Dennison, U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,096, issued in 1981, in which aircraft position information typically provided to the air traffic control visual display CRT is also sent to a similar CRT on board the aircraft in the terminal control area (TCA) surrounding the ATC. The system of Dennison is transponder based and provides only a limited amount of information to the pilot of each aircraft in the control space.